Food, Inc.: Don’t Avoid It

I’ve been avoiding FOOD, INC. since Berlin, and finally I saw it. If you’ve been avoiding it, don’t. It’s a very eye-opening documentary, and the more people have their eyes opened, the more chance there will be of changes coming about as a result of it.

The movie shows the conditions under which animals are raised for meat production, and it is absolutely shocking. And the examples it shows are not the exception. This is how meat is produced in the United States, with animals shoved together, unable to move, ankle deep in their own feces, fed growth hormones, fed food to make them fat, food that they would not eat in nature.

Chickens are born on an assembly line, literally, are treated like objects, live horribly, and are slaughtered inhumanely. Sometimes they’re still alive when they’re boiled in water to get their feathers off. And beef is raised under conditions in which it’s amazing that there aren’t more e coli outbreaks than there are. And pigs — these are intelligent, social animals and . . . actually, I can’t tell you about the horrors involving pigs, because I couldn’t take it. I skipped that part.

Anyway, that’s it. I’m done. I’m not much of a meat eater anyway, and from now on I’m not eating any of it — no beef, no pork, no chicken — unless it’s from some happy farm where the animals cavort merrily all day until the axe falls. It’s not just for their sake, but for mine — it just ain’t healthy, folks.

You look at those meat factories, and it looks like a concentration camp for animals. This wasn’t always the case. This is a phenomenon of the last thirty or forty years, and if you see this movie, you very well might not want to participate in this anymore.